(Largo, FL – June 2013) — Largo Medical Center earns another quality achievement award! It is one of two hospitals in Pinellas County to receive the American Heart Association’s 2013 Mission: Lifeline® Silver Receiving Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success in implementing an exceptional standard of care for heart attack patients in our community.

“Largo Medical Center is dedicated to making our cardiac unit among the best in the country, and it is Mission: Lifeline that is helping us accomplish that by making it easier for our professionals to improve the outcomes of our cardiac patients,” said Anthony Degina, Largo Medical Center, Chief Executive Officer. “I continue to be so extremely proud of our team as it shows its dedication to quality care time after time.”

Each year in the United States, nearly 300,000 people have a STEMI, or ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, the most severe form of heart attack. A STEMI occurs when a blood clot completely blocks an artery to the heart. To prevent death, it’s critical to immediately restore blood flow, either by surgically opening the blocked vessel or by giving clot-busting medication.

Hospitals involved in Mission: Lifeline is part of a system that makes sure STEMI patients get the right care they need, as quickly as possible. Mission: Lifeline focuses on improving the system of care for these patients and at the same time improving care for all heart attack patients.

As a “STEMI Receiving Hospital,” Largo Medical Center meets high standards of performance in quick and appropriate treatment of STEMI patients to open the blocked artery. Before they are discharged, patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers and they receive smoking cessation counseling if needed. Hospitals must adhere to these guidelines-based measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.

Patients can be provided the average STEMI treatment times at Largo Medical Center. These times are approximate and are provided for informational purposes only at www.LargoMedical.com. STEMI times represent an average of our hospital's STEMI cases over the past 52 weeks for which data is available, and is defined as the time it took to reestablish blood flow from the time the patient arrived at the hospital's Emergency Room. The American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Joint Commission have established that this should occur in 90 minutes or less. Largo Medical Center’s average STEMI treatment is consistently lower than the national benchmark of 90 minutes.